When the Right attacks Obama for not being "Pro American" they insult Voters who twice elected him
The Republicans have remained frozen in their 2008 campaign mode for a full six years. They seem almost biologically incapable of recognizing that the majority of the American electorate firmly rejected the Barack Obama as an anti-American figure narrative that Sarah Palin in particular spearheaded that year. They can't stop flogging their straw man; Barack Obama the terrorist lover who is clearly a socialist but may actually be an outright Marxist, who is not really American, who seems closer linked to Islam than to Christianity (let all evidence to the contrary be damned), who just so happens to be Black - which only matters in this case (they aren't racists you know) because Obama probably learned to hate America from his absent Kenyan father.
Yes Republicans try to update and refresh their Anti-Obama talking point factoids periodically, continually injecting their all purpose buzz scare term Benghazi into the 2012 campaign for example, but they still doggedly stick with the same failed narrative. And they don't even bother to retire their old stale talking points when they obviously implode. Obama as potential Muslim is left over from 2008 but is still kept in play, and no one doubts for an instant that Benghazi will continue to be fawned over in 2016. While "fawned over" is indeed an offensive characterization to apply to an incident that saw the death of several Americans, unfortunately its use here is appropriate. The Republican Right keeps treating those deaths like a treasured shiny weapon bestowed on them for their political arsenal, even when the actual families involved plead with them to stop it.
This is all part of a political narrative that has been fully vetted by voters. Twice. Americans, who presumably love America, chose Barack Obama to be their leader in 2008, and then again in 2012. What does the frozen Republican narrative about Barack Obama say about those tens of millions of Americans, the literal majority of voters? Either that they are stupid fools who should not believe their own lying eyes or ears, or that they too must not love America. Take your pick, neither could be characterized as particularly flattering. Republicans push the argument that Barack Obama is actually rooting against America, wanting us to fail, which marks him as an Un-American President. But what most people see is a political party dominated by leading voices who want the President who Americans themselves elected to lead America, to fail. And for millions of voters that calls into question exactly who is acting Un-American after all.
Barack Obama wasn't on the ballot in 2014, and that is the main reason Republicans scored well that year (aided in part by gerrymandered Congressional districts). Were 2014 a Presidential election year, like 2008 and 2012 both were, Republicans would have lost again, because more Americans play closer attention to politics in Presidential election years than they do in the off years in between them. Actually were it not for the massive Ebola hysteria being fanned by the media in the immediate run up to the 2014 election, where Obama was daily lambasted for following expert medical advice and refusing to lock down our borders, Democrats might have done a little better than they ultimately did. Obama didn't panic, the media did, but they weren't on the 2014 ballot either.
Unfortunately for the Republican Party, 2016 will once again be a Presidential Election year. And from most current indications they seem to have learned as much from their 2012 defeat as they did from their 2008 one.
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